as soon as I started fading Ableton's channels I noticed how much smoother and more natural they sounded. The faders were quite interesting actually. I assigned the MIDI Notes to all kinds of things like clip play, all stop, effects on and off, and faders! It is really quite powerful and 'just works.'В The next step was to assign the MIDI messages Ableton was seeing to useful things. Told QLab to send Notes MIDI via the IAC bus and pow! Cross application messaging. Then I told Ableton to look for MIDI Notes from the IAC bus. AllВ I had to do was turn the IAC busВ on in Audio/MIDI Setup. Linking these programs together is incredibly easy. I could play content back through either QLab or Ableton or both simultaneously! I ended up using QLab for preshow and Ableton for the show content. I could change tempo seamlessly, I could use AudioUnit/Ableton Effects (and adjust them live), I could cue musically, and Alyssa would have the familiar interface of a giant GO button! But my favorite benefit was allowing QLab and Ableton Live to share the same audio interface. Therefore I chose Ableton Live as my playback engine with QLab as my user interface.В This enabled a multitude of benefits for me as the designer. For this particular production the Stage Manager, the endlessly talented Alyssa Howard, was also the light, projections and sound operator, she already had enough to deal with. Usually this kind of thing would require a musically orientated board op who can focus just on the sound. QLab, my default choice for playback, cannot do this kind of cuing very well alone. Instead the cues changes were much more musical, some even required a seamless tempo change. In rehearsal we were using some prerecorded tracks and some original music but all of it had tempo specific edits that were required a little more finesse then pressing go and executing the cue instantly. In fact I've posted pieces and pictures of the show to my portfolio here.В The piece was an interesting challenge it was a wordless dance and puppet piece based on Japanese folk tails. For the Yale Summer Cabaret season of 2012 I had the pleasure of designing a show called Of Ogres Retold.

How to fade in qlab